Story of the Day 3/ 25/ 2014

So, My saga of the phone bill continues.
The T-Mobile bill, to be exact.

Today, I received notice that our bill is overdue and we are about to have a $20 fee imposed upon us.
The notice, of course, came in the form of a text.

This is the same form in which T-Mobile has been informing me of all sorts of fanciful things, like the month they erroneously dunned my charge card for over $1000.

Come to think of it, they still have my $1,000. The same money that they were supposed to refund to me.
But haven't.
I know this, because I asked my husband to check, on line.

So, they have a thousand dollars that they took from our charge card to pay a bill of $119.
They were supposed to refund us the money.
They didn't.
And now they are claiming our bill is overdue and they want to charge us another $20.

Of course, I call them.
They did refund the money.
"You did not."
They check.
Oh , gee, they didn't.
Their refund to us bounced.

It bounced?
How can a refund bounce? A refund to a charge card......

It bounced.

If my check to them had bounced, they would charge me $30.
Because their refund to me bounced, they are charging me $20 as a late fee.

What?

The woman agreed that it didn't look like it made sense, but it did.
She tried to explain it to me.
She wanted me to pay an extra $239 with my charge card to avoid the $20 late charge, and to avoid having our service discontinued.
And I could wait for the bounced $1,000 of ours that they had already been paid to be refunded to us.

For some strange reason , this did not sound good to me.
Even though the woman thought it made good sense.

I told her that I would pay .
After the refund was made, and after I saw it on my charge card account.

At this point, she offered to put a ten day hold on our account.
We would not be assessed the late fee, nor have our service cut off.
And our refund would appear on our credit card statement.
And then we could call in and authorize another charge on our card.

This sounded reasonable.

Almost.

In the meanwhile, they still have our $1,000.

Nothing from them is likely to sound very reasonable until they refund it.